Fda To The Rescue

July 09, 1993|By -An editorial by Scripps Howard News Service.

The meddlers over at the Food and Drug Administration are soliciting comments on their earnest plan to require a "reasonable basis" for health claims on restaurant menus. We submit this suggestion: Don't.

Not because we oppose there being a "reasonable basis" for printing a heart beside the Lite Chicken on the bill of fare at Grandma's Eats. We only doubt that nanny-government need command this result by law-specificially, through regulations that cover six pages of fine print in the Federal Register without ever defining what a "reasonable basis" is.

Surely the invisible hand of reputation adequately promotes the reliability of menus. You ask the waitress how the chicken with the heart differs from the chicken without the heart. If she tells you it's cooked in vegetable broth instead of bacon and cream, and when she brings it to you her assertion is clearly borne out, is there really further need for "recognized medical or dietary groups" to have devised the recipe?

This pious government interference attacks a non-problem; the FDA itself assumes that 90 percent of small restaurants are already making reasonable claims. Now, however, to protect themselves from preposterous but predictable lawsuits, restaurateurs will simply drop all nutritional claims, to the lasting annoyance of their ever more health-conscious customers.

Thus does the Food and Drug Administration promote the health and safety of Americans.